I got sick of the misinformation about copyright being slung about DA by people who never bothered to actually look up the correct information. So here's a tutorial about U.S. copyright law.

I am not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice. Nor is it guaranteed to be absolutely correct - the areas of copyright which govern fair use are extremely fuzzy and many people have different opinions. It's also a work in progress, and as such is subject to change at any moment. If you plan to use it as ammunition in any forum wars, you might want to come back and double-check what it says first.

Hiya~! Great tutorial - thank you!I have a question too: So in the case of doujinshis, like fan comics, how does that work? Would you have to go/email the original creator for permission and work something out with them? O: thankies! ^^

Hiya~! Great tutorial - thank you!I have a question too: So in the case of doujinshis, like fan comics, how does that work? Would you have to go/email the original creator for permission and work something out with them? O: thankies! ^^

The "How To Draw manga" book poses, the bases here on DA, a photo you have of someone/stock image on DA, or even an pose from an anime character... would be okay to use right? I make all things I do original characters. Not one thing I do is fanart. I use the poses from these things for my characters. I just use the pose I am looking at. Nothing else.

A spoke with a professional artist who told me, "you can draw any pose you want. Just change the way the pose looks to fit, and look like your character(s)". He also said there all human poses, and you can't copyright a pose we as people do daily.

Its all very confusing to me, and recently because of this... I have been very down, and depressed.

Yeah - you can't copyright a pose, because there's only so many ways the human body can bend and twist and only so many angle you can look at if from. But if you're taking the pose from one picture, you'll want to take other things from other pictures or your own imagination - character design, lighting, background, etc. And the artist you spoke to was absolutely right in that you'll want to change the pose to fit your characters: not just to avoid copying someone else, but because *it makes the picture better*. You want the character to be doing something they'd do naturally, not forcing them to fit what someone else does naturally.

Also, if a pose was 'copyrighted', animation in anime, cartoons, television shows, or even movies could not take place. It would crumble the entertainment industry. My art teacher I spoke to a few days ago, said this same thing when I brought up poses.

I have all my characters, and their designs already set. If I use clothing from one pose, I might want to mix and match clothing from others to make my own clothing. Unless its already basic clothing like a sweater or something like that. Like if I want to make a new character, (male or female) I would take some hair, clothing (from other pictures), add my own eyes and other accessories, and there is a character. The same basic rule that applies with clothing, applies with character design if your making something new, and need ideas.

My characters are high school students, so they would be doing all sorts of different poses. So pretty much any pose fits them

But thank you for replying back to me ^^ I am glad another person besides myself knows better that a pose(s) cannot be copyrighted. I mean its stupid if people think they can. My art teacher agrees with that as well. ^__^

"Just change the way the pose looks to fit, and look like your character(s)"

Was basically you can use the pose(s), just draw your character with the pose(s), and not the picture you are looking at for the pose. Like adding your own clothing, hair, eyes, mouth, nose, eye brows, etc.

Just don't duplicate the image, because that is considered stealing. The pose yes, you can use it. The character, and its contents, no. You couldn't use those clothing since they are copyrighted, or anything else about that character. The use of the pose only was confirmed to me to be okay to use, and that is all. I had to do everything else myself afterward. Which I do anyhow.

This is some pretty good information since i've been wondering how people online who share their artwork without running into problems like this. However i heard of something called an "orphaned" image recently about how if an image on the internet is found and no one claims it someone else can sell it for profit (Which i think is stupid) So maybe it's better to put meta data on your pictures and a watermark?

It's always better to put information on your images -- I put my DA URL large enough that people can see it when they get copied and posted to Photobucket, Flickr, etc. As far as orphaned works go in the U.S., users have to thoroughly investigate any work they think is orphaned to be able to use it - if they can't prove that they did that, then they're still liable for copyright infringement.

Yeah i figured information is better than nothing And thats good to hear about orphaned images---i assumed that it would suck for artists who make amazing work and have it stolen because it wasn't marked per say

Scanning of art does not mean the scanner owns the copyright, rather it is the drawer of the original image that went to press. On DA, the rules are even if you color it, you can't post it. You can post it if you trace and redo the entire work over. (Which I've done with some artistic adjustments.) You are warned...

The tutorial is pretty good. I think the fair use section is a bit fuzzy. I *know* fair use is fuzzy to begin with, but I believe a lot of people slap their fan art with fair use, thus they can do anything they wish... so clarifying the requirements of fair use might be helpful.

Also some people have this crazy notion that because it's *over there* there is no copyright. i.e. Not in my country. One group I saw thought because the licenses ended on one property that they could claim copyright to the property. O.o;; And then continued to say that they had "licensed" the material. But the creator is alive and kicking. And they did not pay the original company any millions of dollars for the rights. So I think there is a confusion about the "Berne Convention" (i.e. more general International copyright law) and "licensing" among fanship and how those two things work. I know Licensing is a whole other ballgame, but a quick and dirty tutorial might help the idiots out there.

Of course it gets more hairy with copyleft, open source, creative commons, etc that's been coming out. But that's too much for a basic FAQ.

That WAS pretty informative... Every time I've read about that 'mailing to yourself' thing, I'd always wonder...But, if I have the original right here, how could anyone possibly have a legal leg to stand on, if they stole it and I sued them?! And I guess they don't! Suckers!